Soccer’s Biggest Team Sells Its Soul to the Oil Sheikhs
In those countries where soccer is known as football — and face it, that’s most of them — one word is guaranteed to recur throughout any conversation on the subject: Barcelona.
Barcelona’s supporters will tell you that their team is more than a word. Mes que un Club (“More than a Club”) is FC Barcelona’s motto, reflecting its self-regarding status as a concept, an idea, a history — even an ethic. For if soccer is the beautiful game, Barcelona supporters will boast, no team better embodies that quality than ours, both on the field and off.
We, they say, are nothing like Europe’s other star teams.
Yes, yes, they’ll add, Barcelona may be a global brand, but it has become so on its own terms. The team remains the most tangible symbol of the elegant capital of Spain’s artsy, trendy, and restive Catalan region. It still celebrates its pivotal role in rousing opposition to General Franco’s regime — the cause of its bitter rivalry with that other Spanish soccer powerhouse, Real Madrid. Its core is composed of local boys cultivated in the Barcelona academy system — while other European teams have obliterated their regional identities by plucking stars from around the world. And while those teams, like England’s Manchester United, are quite happy to sign shirt sponsorship deals with (cue horrified gasp) American insurance companies, Barcelona’s shirts are emblazoned with the logo of UNICEF, the UN agency charged with improving the lot of the world’s most vulnerable children.
For all these reasons and more, Barcelona is especially attractive to the kind of folk who bring to mind Thomas Paine’s scornful phrase about “sunshine patriots.” Their acquaintance with soccer is fleeting. They are instinctively uncomfortable with the game’s embrace of free market economics and, more understandably, the ongoing blight of fan thuggery. Amid such turbulence Barcelona stands out as a beacon, playing out a delightful narrative of athletic progressivism against the reactionary tide.
As with many “narratives,” this one is essentially a myth constructed from nuggets of fact. Indeed, about the only aspect that isn’t artificial is the team’s prowess on the field. Those of you who don’t follow soccer, pay heed: everything you’ve heard about Barcelona’s sheer, breathtaking brilliance is true. Their peerless matrix of playmakers and goalscorers — Iniesta and Xavi, Alves and Pique, Messi and Villa — was on stunning display during their victory in the UEFA Champions League final last month.
None of that dazzling business, however, is of concern to me here. The story beyond the myth is more interesting.
Let’s start with the UNICEF thing. As of next season, a different logo will take its place, thanks to a deal worth nearly $250 million in the most lucrative shirt-sponsorship in soccer history. That logo belongs to the Qatar Foundation, whose airily defined mission is “to prepare the people of Qatar and the region to meet the challenges of an ever-changing world.” When Barcelona reconvenes at its famed Nou Camp stadium following the summer break, expect such Qatar Foundation luminaries as Sheikh Zaki Yamani, the architect of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, and Yousef Hussain Kamal, the emirate’s current finance minister, to be sitting in the executive suites.
This is not the first time that petrodollars have flowed into soccer’s coffers. Arsenal of north London plays in a stadium called the “Emirates,” thanks to a lucrative deal with the Arab airline of the same name. Manchester City was bought by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, brother of Abu Dhabi’s ruler, for over $400 million. Still, as today’s biggest name in international soccer, Barcelona’s arrangement with the Qatar Foundation is the most spectacular example of both the purchasing power and the political power of the oil sheikhs.
Over the last decade, the alliance between European leftists and recidivist elements in the Middle East has been glaringly apparent at street demonstrations. With the Barcelona deal, it has graduated to a boardroom phenomenon. Yet just as the notion of the Gadhafi Foundation as a purely philanthropic outfit was laughable, so it is with the Qatar Foundation. The Gadhafi Foundation, remember, suckered some of Europe’s most eminent liberal institutions and individuals. Now it’s the turn of the Qatar Foundation to step up — if I may swipe an analogy from baseball — to the plate.
It’s the re-reconquista.
I can see this is all heading to a Jesse Owens type moment where the Israeli national team wins the World Cup in Qatar while muslims tear their beards out by the roots all over the middle east.
All that has to happen is for Brazilians to mass convert to Judaism and move to Israel.
LOL. I love it!
You left out AC Milan, whose jersey sponsor is also Emirates Airlines. (At least they didn’t rename the stadium, likely because they share it with Inter Milan.) You also omitted the furor that erupted when the Glazer family — owners of the Tampa Bay Bucs — bought Manchester United in a highly leveraged deal. A lot of fans don’t care for foreign owners, period.
As for the 2022 World Cup, it will be interesting to see how a nation about the size of Connecticut with almost no water or arable land will be able to pull off such a massive undertaking.
I can think of far worse things that petrodollars could be used for.
This is the world we live in. The majority of Americans elected a president who has made it difficult to exploit our own energy resources. The majority of Americans refuse to freeze to death in the dark, or eschew mobility.
Therefore, we are going to use our dollars to buy petroleum from the Middle East. They are going to do something with that money. Maybe I just don’t get it. It’s a soccer club, not the Vatican or the Washington Monument.
curious, every 700 or 800 years or so spain reengages their muslim heritage
Catalans are Africans. Barcelona is named after the Barca family of Carthage fame, Hannibal (meaning “Glory of Baal”) etc. Ideologically speaking, Barcelona is the Moscow of Spain. Hopefully they will all move to Qatar where surely everyone speaks Catalan and there is no memory of Franco… ha! Good riddance and they can take that futut Zapatero wit them too. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!
It may have been a disaster if the Qataris bought the Real Madrid.
What ‘Catino’ said!
During the day only, check out the Catalan inhabited area of Barcelona. Total s hithole. Sure it’s near the beach, but that’s where the similarities end.
I liken it to driving from the clean, well cared for Asian section of Norwalk, California into the Mexican section/Long Beach area. Viva la ‘diversity’ or something like it.. nonsense.
Besides, I stopped getting our favorite football team’s jersey when company’s logos plastered themselves onto it and the stadiums decades ago. The book, ‘Rollerball’ (The book and movie, ‘The Running Man’ pales in comparison) and its message of ‘..in the future.. companies dominate every aspect of our lives..’ rings far louder in many instances.
A certain Eric Blair had an apartment in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. He saw the Communist (I forgot what faction) chain the machine gun operators to heavy loads so they would not run. When they realized they were being defeated the leaders ordered some in the rear guard to go and shoot those poor ba$tards. The Franquistas found them shot in the back of their heads still chained to their machine guns. Like they say there: “fututs i mal pagats.” And now they say that Franco was a beast. Eric saw all that and went to write “Animal Farm” under the name George Orwell.
Catalan nationalists are strange birds: they are Socialists or worse, while retaining the most provincial nationalism.
They think their little dialect is a language, and they imagine themselves a nation when at the zenith of their history they were at best a lucky tribe that mixed with the Carthaginians who taught them the Phoenician art of commerce.
They remember a local warlord James (they call it “the Conqueror”) and they dream he was some sort of Charlemagne. They affirm that Catalonia has given the world more geniuses than the Jews but they practice antisemitism and befriend the rich Arabs who anchor nearby to enjoy the good wines and local whores.
When you visit Catalans in their turf and address them in Spanish they react haughtily and pretend not to understand you. But switch to German, French, or English and their natural servile nature quickly reveals itself. Yet the bulk of their business is done with the Spanish-speaking countries of the former Spanish Empire.
Did I say that they are almost all Communists?
“the catalan speaking part” near the beach ?
you mean Barcelonetta – it used all be like that before the 1992 Olympics. It still is if you move away from the Disney-land pickpocket haven of the city centre.
Yes. Barceloneta. Now also known as “little Africa”
If you think that is a sh!thole try Raval, or Barrio Moros as I prefer to call it.
Today a mayor Spanish newspaper had a piece that explained how the trimmings of the FIFA (the organization that rules football more dictatorially than Franco ever ruled Spain) are all the same trimmings of the mafia.
Barcelona is married to the FIFA and to the UEFA (its little sister) who manage the dates, penalties and referees of all important matches.
One fact of the “grandiosity” of Barcelona: The UEFA arranged for Barcelona to meet Real Madrid in the semi-finals (not the finals where is played in a neutral field and is only one game), and designated the referee to officiate both games in which they managed to win only the game where the assigned referee had Real Madrid playing with only ten men within half-hour of the start. Of the other 3 games they played with each other within the same month (April) Real Madrid beat them in one, again, with only ten men, and they both tie the other two.
Is that the makings of the greatest team in football? Or perhaps should it be Real Madrid?
The Qatar association and their publicity on their shirts is as dubious as everything else Barcelona does.
Real Madrid has always been a better team than Barcelona. The Barza can have Jesus and the referee in their pocket and they still get defeated. They are eternal losers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OifQTVRtr6w&feature=related
I’ll start by saying that the extent of my soccer viewing is usually limited to the World Cup. I do appreciate the game, but I am too busy training myself, to watch too much on TV. With that said, I had a few observations: 1) When I saw the FC Barcelona shirts with UNICEF on the front, my first question was, why is UNICEF, a non-profit, spending the massive amount of money necessary for sponsoring the world’s most expensive sports team? I remember as a kid, going door-to-door raising money for UNICEF, explaining that all funds would be used to help the poor, world-wide. Now I see those individual donations were going to sponsor a pro soccer team. Can anybody explain how this makes sense? 2) Liberals in the US are always condemning US pro sports for being too “commercial” with little Nike/Adidas/Under Armor logos on all our teams’ equipment. Yet in the US, our teams highlight the city or team name on their uniforms, while all those wonderful/cool/hip liberal European teams have nothing but their sponsor’s names, and that is okay. Could this just be ANOTHER example of liberal hypocrisy?
You don’t get it. UNICEF helped the Barza because they were all crippled and lame.
You see?
Like TriGeek, I would like someone to explain how UNICEF ever got a sponsorship deal – did the charity have to pay for it? I would also like someone to explain this FIFA scandal: months ago when they announced Qatar, the most unlikely place, (and Russia!) won the right to host the World Cup, I took it as a given that Qatar had bought the votes. How else could it have happened? So why now all the shock and surprise over revelations that the obvious happened?
Wow! I have learned so much from the comments, the chief being how much hatred there is for Barca and how dubious is its apparent claim to high standards. The team plays great football though!
Mikidiki, In appearance you could be right – “The team plays great football though!” – but there is a lot more to football than passing the ball laterally or backwards hundreds of time.
Look at what one of the great British players of all time (played in the 60′s) said about Barcelona: “they are very small players that keep the ball glued to their feet very well, but when you approach them with any degree of closeness they drop to the ground very quickly”.
In other word they are practicians of the disease that plagues football – divers.
I agree with that neutral British assessment of the stage where football is and the best practicians of that mode.
Sadly, I agree with you regarding Barca football. Even Lionel Messi does that BS.
Far too many footballers are nicknamed ‘El Floppa’ in my household.
I understood that UNICEF did not pay to be on the Barcelona shirt. Barcelona took pride in saying they did not need shirt sponsorship revenues.
The UNICEF endorsement is “protection” money.
The piece 2 days ago about the similitude on the trimmings of the mafia and how the FIFA operates was in the newspaper “El Mundo”,
which is one of the mayor papers in Spain, if anybody cares to check it out.